Still no party

Poor kid. I still couldn't do it. Jack's 6th birthday has come and gone and he's still never had a real party. I have some unreasonable mental-block toward party planning, and I have a definite fiscal-block toward paying for one of those destination party places. Last year I took the easy route and made cupcakes for park day.

Perfection! Most of his friends gathered in one place, no invitations, no decorations, no presents, no favors, no games, no food, etc. Minimal stress. It worked so well I followed suite for Ellie's birthday in May.
Prior to this year's festivities I stressed for quite a while - the problem is I can't seem to make any decisions or even figure out where to start. Dinosaurs or pirates? At the house or at the park? Friends from church and/or from school? Favor bags? Lunch, dinner, snack, or just cake and ice cream? I'm paralyzed by all the options - strangely reminiscent of eating at a restaurant where the menu has more than one page (Cheesecake Factory is a nightmare!)

Another issue was kindergarten. Jack wouldn't be at park day, so simple cupcakes with friends were out. And although his K teacher said it was fine to bring in a treat for a mini class celebration, the treat had to be within the school district's nutrition guidelines. So cupcakes were out altogether. Back to square one - how can it qualify as a party if you can't have cake?

So now I had to figure out:

1. To have or not to have a party

2. A class treat that falls within the extremely restrictive district nutrition guidelines, yet allows for insertion of a candle to be blown out after singing "Happy Birthday"

3. How to make a 3D T-Rex cake

4. How to cast a time freeze spell so I could get everything done before the big weekend - why can't we seem to keep it pared down to a single day???

As it happened, I spent too much time in the land of denial and had to bag the whole party idea. Maybe birthday 7 will be a little more lucky.

I ended up making 3 dozen blueberry muffins for the 31 kids+teacher in his kindergarten class (yes, his class really is that large, and no, it's not because of overlapping schedules, but rather because of stingy district funding.) Oddly enough, more than one child said, "No, thank you" to the muffins. I really don't blame them - the palate is confused by muffins after hearing a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday".

I found a 3D stegosaurus cake pattern and figured Jack would just have to deal, as would I, since I couldn't get the fondant spikes finished in time and had to settle for candy corn.

And finally, no, I couldn't figure out that time spell. That's probably my biggest disappointment, as right now I could really use some sleep.